As Rob Ford calls for firing of ‘sleeping’ worker, web unearths photo of mayor allegedly asleep at City Hall

One day after Mayor Rob Ford called for the firing of a city worker and the outsourcing of recreation workers after a picture was circulated of a city employee allegedly sleeping on the job, the mayor was the subject of his own viral photo, showing him with his eyes closed during a marathon meeting two years ago.

The top photo on the Reddit Toronto page Thursday morning depicts the mayor leaning back on his chair, his hands clasped on his stomach and his face relaxed, with his eyelids shut.

Ford flatly denied he was sleeping in the photo.

“I’m not sleeping,” Ford said during a rare scrum with reporters Thursday afternoon. “You know what this is ridiculous. This is during the 24-hour meeting when deputants are every three minutes. It is so farfetched it is not even funny.”

The meeting featured 168 citizens speaking to the executive committee about contentious cutbacks to city services, including, memorably, a teenage girl breaking down in tears while discussing her love of the city’s libraries and a man using a sock puppet to tell councillors not to act like puppets.

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The newly circulated picture shows Ford at the head of the executive table. With 168 people speaking in about 22 hours, Ford would have been introducing speakers at a clip of one approximately every five minutes. Speakers were given about three minutes to talk, and councillors then had a few minutes to ask questions.

Ford left the meeting just a few times, but then-deputy mayor Doug Holyday said: “I can tell you other mayors never stayed this long.”

The mayor also found himself under criticism for a comment at the 16-hour mark of the meeting, after the author of a children’s book called Words that Start with B spoke, prompting an off-camera remark from Ford.

The latest image of Ford — who at the best of times always seems to be caught in an unflattering pose — was an easy target for the mayor’s critics given his comments Wednesday.

Ford said the photo of a city employee allegedly sleeping at his desk at a North York rec centre, provided by staff member of Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, was a “complete embarrassment” and he was taking it seriously.

“If this is the case, I’m going to ask for the manager and the employee to be dismissed. We cannot tolerate this,” he said. “I want people to show up to work and do their job. If they can’t do their job, there’s thousands of other people that are willing and able to do their job.”

Ford also suggested his office, always on the lookout for a way to downsize government, was looking into contracting out parks and recreation jobs.

CUPE Local 79 president Tim Maguire denounced the city employee picture’s release and said: “Our assumption, until further information, is that this employee was on a mid-morning break.”